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DISASTER
& SOCIAL CRISIS RESEARCH NETWORK - NEWSLETTERS 7
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Complex
Disaster Production - The Case of the Depleted-Uranium Bombing of Afghanistan
Vera Vratusa-Zunjic
The genesis and functioning of the latest U.S.-led "war on terrorism"
confirms the hypothesis that war as a complex disaster is being produced by
dominant social groups in the circumstances of the systemic economic crisis of
capital hyper-accumulation. This crisis manifests itself as the excess
production of merchandises that can not find the payment capable demand due to
the structurally unequal distribution of income. The most powerful fraction of
the ruling class attempts to overcome these halts in capital accumulation and
to recreate conditions for new periods of economic growth through non-economic
means - destruction through wars of apparently surplus work force and capital
that can not be profitably employed [1]
According to the U.S. Commerce Department, Federal Reserve and Labor Department
reports from October and November 2001, the world's most powerful economy
experienced negative rates (often expressed in two digits) of business
investment, industrial production, capacity utilisation, durable goods orders,
export, import, and the paper value of the stock market holdings, ever since
September 2000, on the one hand. During the same period, there was a steep rise
in unemployment and indebtedness by private households, on the other. The Dow
Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 900 points in late August 2001. Such
downward trend in the U.S. economy as the " the last resort importer"
exacerbated further the deterioration in business confidence in European Union
and deepened the depression in the entire East and Southeast Asia. [2]
Under the growing pressure of the precipitously declining manufacturing sector
profit rates for twelve consecutive months, generated through the intensified
speculations of the transnational financial oligarchy since the 1980's, the
transnational corporate and financial capital, concentrated in USA and the
former colonial and neocolonial powers, financially organised in IMF and WB and
militarily organised in NATO, opted for a continuation of war production as the
way out from the worldwide accumulation of capital crisis.
The chronology of events preceding the latest bombing of Afghanistan that can
be reconstructed from the US, EU, Indian and Pakistani press, suggests that it
had been planned and prepared by powerful circles in U.S. and NATO allies for
months before the September 11th 2001 terrorist suicide attacks on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon [3]. Thus, three US state officials, told the Taliban
representatives in July 2001 in Berlin that the U.S. was planning military
strikes against Afghanistan in October. The U.S. department of defense official
visited Tajikistan already in January 2001, while U.S. Rangers were training
special troops in Kyrgyzstan by summer of 2001 [4]. From September 1 to
September 10 25,000 British troops, part of Operation "Essential
Harvest" in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, were pre-positioned
in Oman [5]. Simultaneously two U.S. carrier battle groups arrived on station
in the Gulf of Arabia, and some 17,000 U.S. troops joined more than 23,000 NATO
troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright Star."
Before these military threats and preparations, there existed close business
cooperation at least since 1998 between the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest
private defense contractor in the U.S, represented by the former U.S. President
George H.W. Bush Senior, the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family who
was one of the investors in the Carlyle Group until it sold their stake on
October 26 2001 [6]. As late as May the US Secretary of State gave $43 million in
aid to the Taliban regime, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who were
starving since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the
Taliban regime [7], while the head of the Pakistani secret service after he had
met with the CIA Director, ordered in summer 2001, an aide to wire transfer
$100,000 to Mohammed Atta, later to be designated by the FBI, as the lead
terrorist in the September 11 terrorist suicide hijackings [8].
Probable foreknowledge and even complicity in the events to come by powerful
actors in the U.S. is suggested by two reports. The first of these affirms that
while in a Dubai American hospital receiving treatment for a chronic kidney
infection from 4 to 14 July, Osama bin Laden, who together with his Taliban
Afghan Pastun hosts was a close U.S. ally in the proxy jihad war against Soviet
Union ever since the late 1970s and who in July 2001 was already a wanted
fugitive for the bombings of two U.S. embassies, met with a top local CIA
representative [9]. The second report based on an analysis of stock movements
reveals that on the 6th, 7th and 10th of September, 4744 + 4516 "put
options" (a speculation that the stock would go down) were purchased 600%
above normal level just in the two firms whose planes were going to be highjacked
on September 11, as well as in related banking and insurance companies [10].
Many of the United Airlines put options were purchased through Deutschebank/ AB
Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA.
Ever since September 11, the US financial authorities have been attempting to
stop and reverse the negative tendencies in stock exchange through a massive
infusion of government spending on "war on terrorism", defense
programs, subsidies for "affected" industries and tax cuts for
corporations. The other events since September 11 also suggest the interests
behind the "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan. On October 10, 2001 the
U.S. Ambassador paid a call on the Pakistani oil minister, to put "back on
the table" a previously abandoned U.S. [11] Unocal and Saudi Delta oil and
gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to the Pakistani
coast, for the purpose of selling oil and gas to China, "in view of recent
geopolitical developments". Escobar Pepe concludes in his commentary on
"The New Imperialism" that "the whole thing was a sub-plot of
the New Great Oil Rush: how America would win against the stiff competition of
Russia and Iran" [12]
The US-led "anti-terrorist" coalition is using the hard target weapons
loaded with the Bunker Buster bombs containing reprocessed nuclear waste in the
air strikes in Afghanistan [13]. After the retreat of the Taliban militia, the
US-led allies continued to target the water-supply tunnels that riddle the
landscape with the intention to "flush out" Osama bin Laden, his
Al-Qaeda group and the Taliban fighters from the hillside caves. This is done
even though NATO country governmental, media and military-industrial complex
leaderships are very much aware that "inhaled insoluble [DU] oxides stay
in the lungs longer and pose a potential cancer risk due to radiation. Ingested
DU dust can also pose both a radioactive and toxicity risk." [14]. They
are attempting to cover up, deny or minimise these calamitous effects of the
use of DU shells, presenting them as being as harmless as a "handful of
dirt from your backyard" [15]. The interest behind this misinformation
campaign is to avoid the responsibility for the crimes against
humanity("collateral damages"), the costs of medically helping and
compensating both civilian and military victims, as well as of the costs of DU
storage and cleaning up of the contaminated areas in Iraq, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Yugoslavia and now in Afghanistan.
Vera Vratusa(-Zunjic)
FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, Department of Sociology
Cika Ljubina 18-20, 11OOO Beograd, Yugoslavia
fax: + 38111 - 639-356
phone: + 38111 - 3282-141
e-mail: vvratusa@dekart.f.bg.ac.yu
Notes
1 (Vratusa-Zunjic, V., 1995: Development, Religion, War, ISIFF, Beograd; 2000:
"The Future of the Balkan Region Within the World System", http://filebox.vt.edu/users/wdunaway/vratusa.htm).
2 (Komp, Lothar, 2001: "The World is Sinking in Economic Depression",
Executive Intelligence Review, November 16, No. 44, 24-27).
3 The main source for this reconstruction is the chronology published at http://www.khilafah.com/1421/category.php?DocumentID=2705&TagID=).
4 The Guardian (22.9.2001 and 26.9.2001); BBC (18.9.2001).
5 The Guardian CNN, FOX, and The Observer, International Law Professor Francis
Boyle, The University of Illinois, quoted at http://www.khilafah.com/1421/category.php?DocumentID=2705&TagID=2).
6 The Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2001 sheds some light on the
interwoven material interests that preceded these military plans and
preparations.
7 The Los Angeles Times (22.5.2001).
8 The Times of India (11.10.2001); The Indian SAPRA News Agency (22.5.2001);
MSNBC (7.10.2001).
9 Le Figaro (31.10.2001).
10 The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism
(21.9.2001); FOX News (16.10.2001); The New York Times (15.9.2001) reported
that Mayo Shattuck III has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex
(A.B.) Brown unit of the Deutschbank.
11 The Frontier Post (10.10.2001)-a Pakistani newspaper.
12 c2001 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd., contact address ads@atimes.com).
13 Pakistani Weekly Independent (No. 23, 29.11-5.12.2001).
14 The 1993 US General Accounting Office report GAO/NSIAD-93-90
15 (Bein, Piotr, Zoric, Pedja, " Propaganda for Depleted Uranium - a Crime
against Humankind", contribution to International Conference "Facts
on Depleted Uranium", Praha, November 24-25, 2001, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/files/DUPraha.doc`).